The effectiveness of an integrated phonological awareness approach for children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS)

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Journal Article
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Publisher
University of Canterbury. School of Literacies and Arts in Education.
Journal Title
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Date
2009
Authors
McNeill, B.C.
Gillon, G.T.
Dodd, B.
Abstract

Background and Aim: This study investigated the effectiveness of an integrated phonological awareness approach for children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). Change in speech, phonological awareness, letter knowledge, word decoding, and spelling skills were examined. Method: A controlled multiple single-subject design was employed. Twelve children aged 4-7 years with CAS participated in two 6-week intervention blocks (2-sessions per week) separated by a 6-week withdrawal block. Results: Nine children with CAS made significant gains in their production of target speech sounds and these demonstrated transfer of skills to connected speech for at least one speech target. Eight children showed significant gains in at least one target phoneme awareness skill, and these children demonstrated transfer of skills to novel phoneme awareness tasks. As a group the children with CAS demonstrated improvement in phonological awareness, letter knowledge, word decoding, and spelling ability. Conclusions: An integrated phonological awareness programme was an effective method of simultaneously improving speech, phoneme awareness, word decoding, and spelling ability for some children with CAS.

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Citation
McNeill, B.C., Gillon, G.T., Dodd, B. (2009) The effectiveness of an integrated phonological awareness approach for children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Child Language Teaching and Therapy, in press.
Keywords
apraxia, developmental speech disorder, dyspraxia, intervention, literacy, phonological awareness, reading, treatment effectiveness
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